The Ayn Rand Letter (June to November 1972)

54 Pages·1972·1.382 MB·English

by  Ayn Rand

LETTER
Vol. 1, No. 18 June 5, 1972
"FAIRNESS DOCTRINE" FOR EDUCATION
The "Fairness Doctrine" is a messy little makeshift of the mixed economy, and a
poor substitute for freedom of speech. It has, however, served as a minimal retarder
of the collectivist trend: it has prevented the Establishment's total takeover of the
airwaves. For this reason - as a temporary measure in a grave national emergency T
the fairness doctrine should now be invoked in behalf of education.
The doctrine is a typical product of the socialist sentimentality that dreams of
combining government ownership with intellectual freedom. As applied to television
and radio broadcasting, the fairness doctrine demands that equal opportunity be given
to all sides of a controversial issue - on the grounds of the notion that "the people
owns the airwaves" and, therefore, all factions of "the people" should have equal ac
cess to their communal property.
The trouble with the fairness doctrine is that it cannot be applied fairly. Like
any ideological product of the mixed economy, it is a vague, indefinable approximation
and, therefore, an instrument of pressure-group warfare. Who determines which issues
are controversial? Who chooses the representatives of the different sides in a given
controversy? If there are too many conflicting viewpoints, which are to be given a
voice and which are to be kept silent? Who is "the people" and who is not?
It is clear that the individual's views are barred altogether and that the "fair
ness" is extended only to groups. The formula employed by the television stations in
New York declares that they recognize their obligation to provide equal time to "sig
Is
nificant opposing viewpoints." Who determines which viewpoint is "significant"?
the standard qualitative or quantitative? It is obviously this last, as one may ob
serve in practice: whenever an answer is given to a TV editorial, it is given by a rep
resentative of some group involved in the debated subject.
The fairness doctrine (as well as the myth of public ownership) is based on the
favorite illusion of the mushy socialists, i.e., those who want to combine force and
freedom, ~s distinguished from the bloody socialists, i.e., the communists and fascists.
That illusion is the belief that the people ("the masses") would be essentially unani
mous, that dissenting groups would be rare and easily accommodated, that a monolithic
majority-will would prevail, and that any injustice done would be done only to recal
citrant individuals, who, in socialist theory, do not count anyway. (For a discussion
of why the airwaves should be private property, see "The Property Status of Airwaves"
in my book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.)
In pra,ctice, the fairness doctrine has led to the precarious rule of a "centrist"
attitude: of timidity, compromise and fear (with the "center" slithering slowly, inex
orably to the left) - i.e., control by the Establishment, limited only by the remnants
of a tradition of freedom: by lip service to "impartiality," by fear of being caught
© Copyright 1972, The Ayn Rand Letter, Inc. All rights reserved. Material may not be reproduced in any form without written permission.
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a job on a university faculty - or for the independent mind of a student to remain
independent.
This is the logical result of generations of post-Kantian statist philosophy and
of the vicious circle which it set up: as philosophy degenerates into irrationalism,
it promotes the growth of government power, which, in turn, promotes the degeneration
of philosophy.
It is a paradox of our age of skepticism - with its proliferation of bromides to
the effect that "Man can be certain of nothing," "Reality is unknowable," "There are
no hard facts or hard knowledge - everything is soft [except the point of a gun]" -
that the overbearing dogmatism of university departments would make a medieval enforcer
of religious dogma squirm with envy. It is a paradox but not a contradiction, because
it is the necessary consequence - and purpose - of skepticism, which disarms its oppo
nents by declaring: "How can you be sure?" and thus enables its leaders to propound
absolutes at whim.
It is this kind of intellectual atmosphere and these types of cynical, bigoted,
envy-ridden, decadent cliques that the Federal Government now proposes to support with
public funds, and with the piously reiterated assurance that the profiteering institu
tions will retain their full freedom to teach whatever they please, that there will be
"no strings attached."
Well, there is one string which all the opponents of the intellectual status quo
now have the right to expect and demand: the fairness doctrine.
(To be continued.)
OBJECTIVIST CALENDAR
I am very happy to announce that the motion picture rights to Atlas Shrugged
have been bought by Albert S. Ruddy. Mr. Ruddy is Hollywood's top producer, .who
- in the face of enormous opposition - made the sensationally successful film The
Godfather.
For almost fifteen years, I had refused to sell Atlas Shrugged except on con
dition that I would have the right of approval of the film script, a right which
Hollywood does not grant to authors. Mr. Ruddy had the courage (and the respect
for Atlas Shrugged) to break the precedent and agree to my condition. Work on the
film will begin at once. If all those concerned do their best - as we intend to -
the cultural consequences will be incalculable.
Thank you for the fact that you will want, I know, to celebrate this event -
the biggest news this Calendar can offer you.
Ayn Rand
The Ayn Rand Letter, published fortnightly by The Ayn Rand Letter, Inc., 201 East 34th Street, New York, N.Y. 10016.
Contributing Editor: Leonard Peikoff; Subscription Director: Elayne Kalberman; Production Manager: Barbara Weiss.
LETTER
Vol. 1, No. 19 June 19, 1972
"FAIRNESS DOCTRINE" FOR EDUCATION
Part II
If the public allegedly owns universities, as it allegedly owns the air
waves, then for all the same reasons E£ specific ideology ~ be permitted ~
hold ~ monopoly in any department of ~ public ~ semi-public university. In
all such institutions, every "significant viewpoint" must be given representa
tion. (By "ideology," in this context, I mean a system of ideas derived from
a theoretical base or frame of reference.)
The same considerations that led to the fairness doctrine in broadcasting,
apply to educational institutions, only more crucially, more urgently, more des
perately so, because much more is involved than some ephemeral electronic sounds
or images, because the mind of the young and the future of human knowledge are
at stake.
Would this doctrine work in regard to universities? It would work as well
- and as badly - as it has worked in broadcasting. It would work not as a motor
of freedom, but as a brake on total regimentation. It would not achieve actual
fairness, impartiality or objectivity. But it would act as a temporary impedi
ment to intellectual monopolies, a retarder of the Establishment's takeover, a
breach in the mental lethargy of the status quo, and, occasionally, an opening
for a brilliant dissenter who would know how to make it count.
Remember that dissenters, in academic world, are not the advocates
today'~s
of mysticism-altruism-collectivism, who are the dominant cliques, the representa
tives of the entrenched status quo. The dissenters are the advocates of reason
individualism-capitalism. (If there are universities somewhere that bar the
teaching of overtly vicious theories, such as communism, the advocates of these
theories would be entitled to the protection of the fairness doctrine, so long
as the university received government funds - because there are taxpaying citi
zens who are communists. The protection would apply to the right to teach ideas
- to criminal actions, such as campus riots or any form of physical violence.)
~
Since the fairness doctrine cannot be defined objectively, its application
to specific cases would depend in large part on subjective interpretations, which
would often be arbitrary and, at best, approximate. But there is no such approx
imation in the universities of Soviet Russia, as there was not in the universi
ties of Nazi Germany. The purpose of the approximation is to preserve, to keep
© Copyright 1972, The Ayn Rand Letter, Inc. All rights reserved. Material may not be reproduced in any form without written permission.
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alive in men's minds, the principle of intellectual freedom - until the time when
it can be implemented fullydilcemore,infre~(;Le. i priv~te,universities.
The main function of the fairness doctrine would be a switch of the burden
of fear, from the victim to the entrenched gang - and a switch of moral right,
from the entrenched gang to the victim. A dissenter would not have to be in the
position of a martyr facing the power of a vast Establishment with all the inter
lockings of unknowable cliques, with the mysterious lines of secret pull leading
to omnipotent governmental authorities. He would have the protection of a recog
nized right. On the other hand, the Establishment's hatchet men would have to be
cautious, knowing that there is a limitation (at least, in principle) on their
responsible power granted by the use of public funds "with no strings attached."
But the fight for the fairness doctrine would require intellectual clarity,
objectivity, and good, i.e., contextual, judgment - because the elements to con
sider are extremely complex. For instance, the concept of "equal time" would not
be entirely relevant: an hour in the class of an able professor can undo the harm
done by a semester in the classes of the incompetent ones. And it would be im
possible to burden the students with courses on every viewpoint in every subject.
There is no precise way to determine which professors' viewpoints are the
appropriate opposites of which - particularly in the midst of today's prevalent
eclecticism. The policy of lip service to impartiality and of window dressing
is practiced in many schools; and the eclecticism in some of the smaller colleges
is such that no specific viewpoint can be discerned at all. It is the cases of
extremes, of ideological unity on the faculty and monopolistic monotony in teach
ing - particularly in the leading universities (which set the trends for all the
rest) - that +equire protest by an informed public opinion, by the dissenting
faculty members, and by the main victims: the students.
Intellectual diversity and ideological opposites can be determined only in
terms of essentials - but it is an essential of modern philosophy to deny the ex
istence or validity of essentials (which are called "oversimplification"). The
result is that some advocates of a guaranteed minimum income are regarded as de
fenders of capitalism, advocates of theories of innate ideas are regarded as cham
pions of reason, the tribal conformity of hippies is regarded as an expression of
individualism,etc. And most college students have lost or never developed the
ability to think in terms of essentials.
But - as in the case of political election campaigns, in which essentials
are evaded more stringently than in modern universities - everyone knows implic
itly which side he is for or against, though no public voices care to identify
the issues explicitly. The consistency of such politicians' or professors' fol
lowers is remarkable for men who claim man's inability to distinguish essentials.
(Which is one clue to the motives of the advocates of the "non-simplified," Le.,
concrete-bound, approach.)
The ability explicitly to identify the essentials of any subject he stud
ies, is the first requirement of a student who would want to fight for the fair
ness doctrine. Then, if he sees that he is offered only one viewpoint on a given
fundamental issue - and knows that other "significant" viewpoints exist - he can
protest, on the grounds of his right to know and to make an informed choice.
"Significance," in this context, should be gauged by one of two standards:
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the degree of historical influence achieved by a given theory or, if the theory
is contemporary, its value in providing original answers to fundamental questions.
As in the case of broadcasting, it would be impossible to present every individ
ual's viewpoint. But if the great historical schools of thought were presented,
the fairness doctrine would achieve its purpose (or perform its "trustbusting"
function, if you will): the breakup of that one-sided indoctrination which is the
hallmark of government-controlled schools.
In all fields that the government enters (outside of its proper sphere), two
motives - one vicious, the other virtuous - produce the same results. In the case
of schools, the vicious motive is power-lust, which prompts a teacher or an educa
tional bureaucrat to indoctrinate students with a single viewpoint (of the kind
that disarms them mentally, stunts their critical faculty, and conditions them to
the passive acceptance of memorized dogma). The virtuous motive is a teacher's
integrity: a man of integrity has firm convictions about what he regards as true;
he teaches according to his convictions, and he does not propagate or support the
theories which he regards as false (though he is able to present them objectively,
when necessary). Such a teacher would be invaluable in a private university; but
in a government-controlled school, his monopolistic position makes him as tyran
nical an indoctrinator as the power-luster. (The solution is not what the oppo
nents of any firm convictions suggest: that the honest teacher turn into a flex
ible pragmatist who'll switch his ideas from moment to moment, or into a skeptical
pig who'll eat anything.) The consequences of any attempt to rule or to support
intellectual activities by means of force will be evil, regardless of motives.
(This does not mean that dissent is essential to intellectual freedom; the possi
bility of dissent, is.)
Who would enforce the fairness doctrine in education? Not the executive
branch of the government, which is the distributor of the funds and has a vested
interest in uniformity, i.e., conformity. The doctrine has to be invoked and up
held by private individuals and groups. This is another opportunity for those
who wish to take practical action against the growth of statism. This issue could
become the goal of an ad hoc movement, uniting all men of good will, appealing (in
the name of intellectual justice) to whatever element of nineteenth-century lib
eralism still exists in the minds of academic liberals - as distinguished from the
Marcusians, who openly propose to drive all dissenters off the university facul
ties. (Is the Marcusians' goal to be achieved at public expense and with govern
ment support?)
If a fairness movement enlisted the talents of some intelligent young law
yers, it could conceivably find support in the courts of law, which are still sup
posed to prot~ct an individual's civil rights. The legal precedent for a fairness
doctrine is to be found in the field of broadcasting. The practical implementa
tion, i.e., the challenge to the Establishment in specific cases, is up to the
voluntary effort, the dedication, and the persuasiveness of individuals.
It must be remembered firmly that a fairness doctrine is not a string on
the universities' freedom, but a string on the government's power to distribute
public funds.. That power has already demonstrated its potential for fantastically
evil and blatantly unconstitutional control over the universities. Under threat
of withholding government funds and contracts, the Department of Health, Education
and Welfare is now imposing racial and sexual quotas on university faculties, de
manding that some unspecified number of teachers consist of ethnic minority-members
and women. To add insult to injury, HEW insists that this is not a demand for quo-
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tas, nor a demand to place racial considerations above merit, but a demand for
"proof" that a university (e.g., Columbia) has made an effort "to find" teachers
of equal merit among those groups. Try and prove it. Try and prove that you
have "searched." Try to measure and prove the various applicants' merit - when
no precise, objective standards of comparison are given or known. The result is
that almost any female or minority-member is given preference over anyone else.
The consequence is a growing anxiety about their future among young teachers who
are male and do not belong to an ethnic minority: they are now the victims of the
most obscenely vicious discrimination - obscene, because perpetrated in the name
of fighting discrimination.
If the rights of various physiological minorities are so loudly claimed
today, what about the rights of intellectual minorities?
I have said that the fairness doctrine is a product of the mixed economy.
The whole precarious structure of a mixed economy, in its transition from free
dom to totalitarian statism, rests on the power of pressure groups. But pres
sure-group warfare is a game that two (or more) ideological sides can playas
well as one. The disadvantage of the statists is the fact that up to the last
minute (and even beyond it) they have to play under cover of the slogans of in
dividual rights and freedom. The advocates of freedom can beat them at their
own game - by taking them at their word, but playing it straight. The time is
right for it. The Establishment is not very popular at present, neither polit
ically nor intellectually, neither with the country at large nor with many of
its own members. A movement of the serious students and of the better teachers,
defending the rights of intellectual minorities and demanding a fairness doc
trine for education, would have a good chance to grow and to succeed. But tak
ing part in such a movement would be much more difficult and demanding (and
rewarding) than chanting slogans and dancing ring-around-a-rosy on some campus
lawn.
If student minorities have succeeded in demanding that they be given courses
on such subjects as Zen Buddhism, guerrilla warfare, Swahili, and astrology, then
an intellectual student minority can succeed in demanding courses on, for instance,
Aristotle in philosophy, von Mises in economics, Montessori in education, Hugo in
literature. At the very least, such courses would save the students' mind; poten
tially, they would save the culture.
No, the fairness doctrine would not reform the universities' faculties and
administrations. There would be a great deal of hypocrisy, of compromising, of
cheating, of hiring weak advocates to teach the unfashionable theories, of "token
ism," of window dressing.
But think of what one window can do for a sealed, airless, lightless room.
The Ayn Rand Letter, published fortnightly by The Ayn Rand Letter, Inc., 201 East 34th Street, New York, N.Y.1001S.
Contributing Editor: Leonard Peikoff; Subscription Director: Elayne Kalberman; Production Manager: Barbara Weiss.
LETTER
Vol. 1, No. 20 July 3, 1972
THE DEAD END
There were three casualties in the Democratic Presidential primaries
this year: the notion of rule by consensus, the notion of safety in the
middle of the road, and Pragmatism. (This last is the root; the two others
are its consequences.)
President Johnson was the climax of the policy of rule by consensus
- and he fell as a martyr to the principle that principles are unnecessary.
It took only four years to carry him from a popular landslide to so great
an unpopularity that he could not venture to face the voters again. Rule
by consensus is the practice of the belief that a country splintered into
pressure groups can be run indefinitely by an expert contortionist-juggler,
who would encourage the pressure groups, multiply them, and play them against
one another, in the name of balancing their demands and reaching a consensus
of compromises, by means of distributing favors and burdens at whim, on the
expediency of the moment.
This policy rested on some implicit premises and the strict precondi
tion that they must never be named: 1. that any group demand is as valid as
any other and is to be weighed according to the group's numbers, regardless
of justice or rights; 2. that individual rights are obsolete; 3. that the
lives and property of the citizens belong to the government, as a common
pool to be ladled out for the purchase of the next election; 4. that the
people are too dumb to understand, so that neither the expropriated vic
tims nor the expropriating profiteers would "go to extremes" and upset the
game.
Sooner or later, somebody had.to cash in on it and make those premises
explicit. Senator George McGovern did.
President Nixon opened the way for him (just as another "conservative,"
President Hoover, opened the way for the welfare-state policies of President
Roosevelt). As a true pragmatist, Mr. Nixon saw nothing wrong in proposing
to save capitalism by providing everyone with a guaranteed minimum income.
But, with the usual circumlocutions, he evaded the full moral-legal meaning
of his proposal. Mr. McGoyern did not.
Mr. McGovern announced that he proposes "a redistribution of wealth."
That term has been bandied about for some time by the intellectual Estab-
© Copyright 1972, The Ayn Rand Letter, Inc. All rights reserved. Material may not be reproduced in any form without written permission.
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lishment, as a dreamily sloppy metaphor. Mr. McGovern adopted it as an ex
plicit political program.
If a man proposes to redistribute wealth, he means explicitly and nec
essarily that the wealth is his to distribute. If he proposes it in the name
of the government, then the wealth belongs to the government; if in the name
of society, then it belongs to society. No one, to my knowledge, did or
could define a difference between that proposal and the basic principle of
communism. It might be said, perhaps, that communism is more practical and
less cruel, at least in theory: a communist government takes over an entire
economy and forbids men to act, but assumes the responsibility of providing
for their livelihood. Mr. McGovern's proposal is closer to the theory of
fascism: it leaves to individual men the responsibility of production and
of struggling for existence, but lets the government assume the power to
dispose of anything they produce.
No one, to my knowledge, has asked him the only relevant question: "By
what right?
(To ask that question, a man would have to uphold individual rights,
which means that he would have to discover that individual rights are in
compatible with altruism, which means that he would have to reject altruism
all the way down, down to its roots. Most men profess to see no connection
between altruism and politics. So it is curious, psychologically, to ob
serve the extent of their fear - which is now approaching panic - at the
necessity of facing the issue and challenging the altruist creed.)
Since the notion of rule by consensus had replaced individual rights
with the untenable fiction of "group rights," there was nothing to prevent
Mr. McGovern from discarding "group rights" and aligning himself with the
demands of just one group at the expense of all others: the Lumpenprole
tariat of body or spirit, i.e., those who do not work, i.e., most of the
very poor and the very rich.
Mr. McGovern proposes to slice off the top, the near-top, and the
middle of the economic pyramid, thus cutting off the future, the ambition,
the energy, and the hope of every individual in this country, except those
on public or parental welfare. As far as can be calculated from Mr. McGov
ern's switching, contradictory statements, the expropriation would apply
to the "wealth" of anyone earning more than $20,000 a year for a family of
four.
This proposal is not aimed at the very rich, because it would not ex
propriate what one owns already, but only what one earns. <The very rich
are a very small minority and most of them, today, are not producers, but
heirs of the second and third generation; many of them are in the vanguard
of Mr. McGovern's supporters (and backers). They could be taxed 100% of
their income and still live for the rest of their days in a luxury which
the rest of the nation would be forbidden to equal or approach. The McGov
ern plan would stop everyone on whatever level he has happened to reach and
forbid him to rise. It would freeze the natio~ into economic castes and
destroy one of this country's best features, the hallmark of economic free
dom: upward mobility. Observe that the plan is beginning to be referred to,
not as "redistribution of wealth," but as "redistribution of income" -which
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makes it clear that it is not the "ability to pay," but the ability to
~,
that will be crushed under an unspeakable mortgage.
A nation's productive - and moral, and intellectual - top is the mid
dle class. It is a broad reservoir of energy, it is a country's motor and
lifeblood, which feeds the rest. The common denominator of its members, on
their various levels of ability, is: independence. The upper classes are
merely a nation's past; the middle class is its future.
It is against this class - and its symbol: the self-made man - that
the McGovern proposal is' directed.
For a man with a family, an income of $20,000 a year is not luxury,
but merely a state of precarious comfort, in view of today's government
created inflation. If this is all a man can hope to earn, he will not work
very hard or for very long. Human effort, insofar as it is human, is goal
directed. No worker, on any level of ability, can stand an endless routine
of toil with no goal in sight, no hope of progress, improvement or achieve
ment. Those who become adjusted to it - like the robots of totalitarian
states or of primitive cultures - do not produce much more than their own
barest sustenance. What, then, would become of the men on welfare? Who
would provide them with their guaranteed incomes?
And who, on an income of $20,000 a year, would be able to invest -
and thus to finance, not the growth, but the mere maintenance of industry?
Who would provide jobs for those willing and able to work? There is a silly
current expression that describes a capitalist economy as a "trickling down
of wealth." Wait till you see what a trickling down of paralysis would do.
It is an indication of the state of today's culture that Mr. McGovern's
plan is being criticized, not on the grounds of moral or political principles,
but on the grounds of his faulty figures. His critics are not saying: "This
is too evil," but only: "This is too expensive." (So much for the humani
tarian motives of the welfare statists.)
But even that level of criticism has revealed a morally shameful fact.
Having, apparently, little or no respect for human rights and lives, Mr. Mc
Govern permitted himself to slapdash his program in such a manner that econ
omists have been demonstrating the gross inaccuracy of his figures in regard
to the costs of his plan, clearly implying either deceit or fantastic irre-
sponsibility on his part. Mr. McGovern's answer was a series of evasive,.
contradictory statements, including the assertion that his specific proposal
was merely an "experimental" idea. Whose guinea pigs are we? What state
have we reached if a politician may permit himself to experiment in such a
manner with the personal, individual work, property, ambition, goals and
life of everyone of us?
There are other indications ofMr • McGovern' s character. .' For instance,
while promising a national expropriation of wealth to his followers, Mr. Mc
Govern had an ad published in The Wall Street Journal, in which he attempted
to reassure businessmen by declaring that he, as President, would not be able
to enact confiscatory tax legislation, since only Congress holds the power to
do so. How is that for the neatest trick of the decade? Yet this is the can
didate now publicized asa man of integrity.
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I shall not discuss Mr. McGovern's foreign policy. It is regarded
as bad form to cast doubt on the sincerity of a candidate's motives (a
rule of etiquette with which I agree, as far as "psychologizing" is con
cerned). But I wish some political Master of Protocol would tell us how
to assess an obscenity such as a proposal for the unilateral disarmament
of the united States - and would suggest some possible explanation, other
than treasonable irresponsibility or a staggering degree of stupidity.
A more charitable assessment is not helped by Mr. McGovern's state
ments. He has declared on television that there has been too much fear of
communism, that the real danger to an American citizen at night in the city
streets is the crime wave, not communism. A concrete-bound, small-town
housewife may, 'perhaps, think in that manner. But a Presidential candidate?
The liberal Establishment and its pragmatist commentators seem to be
bewildered by Mr. McGovern's success in the primaries. They had regarded
him as a negligible contender, who had no chance because: a. he is an ex
tremist, and the country wants the middle of the road; b. he has no "cha
risma," and the people's choice of a President is determined by his charm
on the television screen. with their road blasted straight through the
middle, they are now reaching for equally serious explanations, such as
the claim that Mr. McGovern owes his victories to a handful of college
goons.
Since pragmatists deny the validity of principles and the power of
ideas, it is not within their capacity to grasp that Mr. McGovern owes his
victories to the Messrs. Humphrey, Muskie, Lindsay, etc.
"In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same
basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins •••• The inconsist
ent person will endorse and propagate the same ideas as his adversary, but
in a weaker, diluted form - and thus will sanction, assist, and hasten his
adversary's victory, creating in the minds of their disputed following the
impression of his adversary's greater honesty and courage, while discredit
ing himself by an aura of evasion and cowardice."
This is a pretty accurate description of what happened in the Demo
cratic primaries of 1972 - except that I wrote it in 1964 ("The Anatomy of
Compromise" in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal).
Since there were no fundamental differences among the candidates,
those in the middle of the road paved it with altruist-statist generali
ties and evasions, thus enabling Mr. McGovern to march forward as the con
sistent representative of their unadmitted notions, the practical imple
menter of their undefined promises, the fearless dispeller of the murky
fog they had left behind. Time and again, in televised interviews, voters
explained their rejection of various candidates by saying helplessly, al
most pleadingly: "I don't know what he stands for." This referred·most
often to'Senator Muskie, who was the best exponent of the status quo and -
managed to convey, no matter what he said, that he was saying nothing.
It is the status quo that got the worst beating - and even the Es
tablishment commentators admit it - the -,hopeless, aimless, corrt;lpt, mealy
mouthed and violence-:-ridden status quo of the consensus-centrist""pragmatist